A requiem for Richard: on the cult of purgatory, chantry chapels, and the king's faith

Yesterday, the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, celebrated a requiem Mass for Richard III at Holy Cross Priory, a Catholic church near (Anglican) Leicester Cathedral. I've only been able to find one photograph, the one you see above. I find it most regrettable that the Mass wasn't of a form that Richard would have easily recognized, especially since the Dominican Rite liturgy is apparently celebrated at the priory daily. Still, there are two noteworthy links to the past from that Mass which I'm compelled to point out.

1.) One of the choirs that sang at the Mass was the Choir of Saint Barnabas Cathedral, Nottingham. Saint Barnabas was one of the first Catholic parishes built in England after Catholic emancipation. It was designed by Augustus Welby Pugin in 1841, sponsored largely by Pugin's longtime patron, Lord Shrewsbury. Unfortunately (with no disrespect intended to its current members who serve in good faith), the choir has not been of the traditional boys/men style for many years.

The Westminster vestment, front

2.) The chasuble worn by Cardinal Nichols at this Mass was an antique; so old, in fact, that some people were upset at the risk simply wearing it at all would pose to the fabric. It is the Westminster vestment, dating to the 15th century and believed to have been worn by the Benedictine monks of Westmnster Abbey during the reign of Richard III. Further, its designs match that of a vestment described in Richard's royal inventories. We have reason to believe, therefore, that Richard may have attended Mass by a priest wearing this chasuble at least once in his life. One description says of the needlework:

"Over the crucifix is a dove symbolizing the Holy Ghost; and over the dove is God the Father surrounded by glory. On each side of the crucifix are two angels in mid air, with chalices in each hand receiving the Precious Blood from the wounds of the dying Christ. At the foot of the crucifix is a figure in armour over which is thrown a robe open at front. This and the following single figures are standing under an architectural canopy in which we see 'Perpendicular' characteristics. On the orphrey on the front of the chasuble are: St. Edward the Confessor, a female and a male saint, the three being crowned and richly attired. All the figures are graceful and edifying. The main body of the chasuble is covered with a beautiful woven 'pomegranate pattern.' Though the general effect of this vestment is somewhat spoilt by its being cut down to the French 'violin shape,' yet it is, nevertheless, very rich and fine." (The Month, Volume 103, page 617)

And yes, before one jumps to the assumption that this chasuble is proof of the fiddleback style's antiquity, I assure you it's quite the contrary! Some Rococo-era vandals sliced the fabric away to conform this fine vestment to the fashions of the day; probably the priests and seminarians of Ushaw College (an active seminary until it closed in 2011 due to lack of vocations), who received the vestment as a gift in 1867. Ushaw does provide us with another Pugin connection, however. Augustus Pugin designed its first chapel, in 1847. Two of his sons, also architects, provided buildings of their own.

Why the requiem Mass matters

What's a requiem Mass, anyway? The name comes from the first word of the Introit chant which begins that Mass: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine. "Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord." It, and all the other proper chants of the Mass have long since been set to famous scores by classical composers such as Mozart's (which were still meant to be sung in the context of actual Masses, not concert-halls), but you may listen to the original plainchant version, which I sing with my Gregorian schola from time to time, below:

Rest from what, though? This liturgy is officially called the Missa pro defunctis, the Mass for the dead: and its chief purpose is to be offered to ease the suffering of a soul in purgatory. Since purgatory is a uniquely Catholic doctrine, only the Catholic Church ever offers requiem Masses for the dead (although the Eastern Orthodox, to my knowledge, have similar services). Most other Christian sects teach that souls only go to one of two places: heaven or hell. But in the Catholic faith, it's understood that many souls, even if they've been forgiven of the eternal consequences of sin (the loss of eternal salvation) by confession, must still atone for temporal consequences of sin by the purifying process we call purgatory, before being admitted to the gates of heaven.

A solemn requiem Mass from a book of hours.

I explained the doctrine in part in my past article on indulgences, but in short, the Church encourages her members to pray always for the souls of all the faithful departed because those prayers may ease the passage of such souls to eternal life. Any prayer may be said to give relief for the souls of deceased loved ones and so on, but no prayer is higher in value than that of the sacrifice of the Mass. Because the Mass is the highest prayer, by which Christ's sacrifice on the cross is mystically re-presented in an unbloody manner, the Church has long applied the Mass's boundless merits to the souls of the departed.

A better understanding of what the requiem Mass is may be gathered by considering who doesn't receive them:

-Requiems are never offered for canonized saints, of course, because those souls are already in heaven and have no need for prayers of repose.

-Requiems are also not offered for the souls of baptized infants and children who die while young; because they died before reaching the age of reason, they had no occasion to ever commit sin, and therefore died as saints. They are buried instead with the Mass of the angels, the clergy wearing white vestments rather than black.

-The question of children who die before their parents can baptize them is a thorny one; while I personally have no doubt that God would bring those children to heaven, this was not a "given" until recent times. Still, even in the strictest theological understandings, a baby has no reason to go to purgatory, so requiems are not offered for them, either.

This leaves everyone else; at least, all Catholics who are known to have died at least nominally within the faith. So, anyone who didn't die while excommunicated. All these Catholics may have the requiem Mass prayed for them, even the worst sinners. [Edited to add: a commenter adds, citing the Catholic Encyclopedia, that the requiem Mass may be offered privately, but not publicly, even for deceased non-Catholics and excommunicated persons under certain conditions.] While the requiem's prayers are of no avail to people who are in hell, there's no way for any of us to know who's there; therefore, having the requiem offered for them is always a good thing. What's more is that the requiem Mass, though it forms a central part of the burial rites of any adult Catholic, is by no means limited to that moment. It can be offered for any Catholic on most days (excluding feasts of certain rank), and is especially recommended on the anniversary of either death or of burial. And, unless the person is declared a saint, requiems may be offered for that person every eligible day until the end of time. And here is where Richard III enters our story.

Richard's chantry chapels

We can get a window into Richard III's beliefs by examining how he treated the dead. From the 13th century until the Reformation, the English were perhaps Christendom's most zealous believers in purgatory and the need to offer souls for the faithful departed. An entire institution was created just for this need: the chantry chapel. A chantry was an endowment for one or more priests to offer requiem Masses and other prayers (such as the Office of the Dead) for the soul, or souls, of the patron. Basically, a priest was given an income solely to offer requiem Masses. Since a priest traditionally could not offer Mass more than once a day, these chantry priests had no liturgical duties to the greater community and could focus the rest of their time on charitable works; a feat much lamented when Edward VI's reformers came around to suppress all the chantries and confiscate their wealth for the king's advisors in the name of redistribution for "the public good".

Remains of the St Leger chantry chapel at Saint George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. It was endowed for two priests to sing for their souls ("with too prestys sy’gyng for ev’more. On whose soule god have mercy") for Sir Thomas St Leger and his wife, Anne of York. Anne was the older sister of Kings Edward IV and Richard III. One of her living descendants, Michael Ibsen, provided his DNA to positively identify the remains of Richard III.

Medieval cathedrals and parish churches alike in England are still filled with the remnants of the chantry chapels, which are often like private churches within a church. These alcoves were originally built by the wealthy, but eventually, people of the common classes also pooled funds together to build chapels to be shared among several families, or for guilds. In the medieval Church, we can see that there was serious preoccupation with the fate of one's deceased relatives and other loved ones. Even by medieval standards, though, Richard III took that devotion to a new level. I will mention some examples named in Aubrey's National and Domestic History of England, among other sources:

-after his elder brother's death, Richard paid the friars in Richmond "for the saying of one thousand masses for the soul of King Edward IV"

-he endowed the chantry priest at the village of Sheriff-Hutton, where he had imprisoned Earl Rivers, with an additional ten pounds per year

-he elevated the chantry at Middleham, where he first met his wife, Anne Neville, into a college of 12 priests; the charter explains his intention was "in part of satisfaction of such things as at the dreadful day of judgement I shall answer for" (so says Seward's Richard III: England's Black Legend)

-and, most notably, he planned to erect a chantry chapel at York Minster with 6 altars and 100 priests. Seward observes that this would have been a monumental expense involving also expenses for hundreds of additional servants, and a great many vestments and vessels. If he had succeeded, Richard would have had enough priests to offer requiem Masses for his soul all day long on every permitted day of the year: truly, in perpetuity.

The Markham Chapel, built in the reign of Henry VIII, is an example of one of the many chantry chapels built in ordinary parish churches: a church within the church. All around it are designs from the "dance of death" motif, reminding all who see it of their own impending mortality.

Yet another abortive project, which was actually on the verge of completion, was Richard's chantry chapel at the site of the Battle of Towton. Claiming the lives of around 28,000 men in 1461, Towton was the bloodiest battle of the Wars of the Roses, and in fact, all of English history until the Somme during World War I. Richard's brother, Edward IV, ordered his men to take no prisoners; bodies piled up in the river until the waters ran red with blood for whole days. Richard set his men to dig the bodies out of mass graves, where they had lain for over twenty years by this point, and re-buried in consecrated ground. He set aside forty pounds for the chantry chapel to be raised atop the very battleground, where priests would pray for the souls of the men on both sides of the war, York and Lancaster. The king said:

"the people of this kingdom, in a plentiful multitude, were taken away from human affairs; and their bodies were notoriously left on the aforesaid field and in other places nearby, thoroughly outside the ecclesiastical burial places, in three hollows. Whereupon we, on account of affection, contriving the burial of the deceased men of this sort, caused the bones of the same men to be exhumed and left for an ecclesiastical burial in these coming months, partly in the parish church of Saxton in our said county of York and in the cemetery of the said place, and partly in the chapel of Towton aforesaid, and in the surroundings of this very place."

After the ascent of Henry VII, the construction was abandoned and the chantry chapel fell to ruin. Archaeologists have, however, apparently discovered its remains just last year.

Richard's personal devotions

Aside from the chantry chapels, Richard endowed many other priests to offer Masses for the living, and seems to have endowed the creation of more college chapels during his two years than any other king of England in the same amount of time. But what about his private devotions? Did Richard even pray at all when his subjects weren't looking? Or was piety, as in the scene of his pretended reluctance to accept the crown in Shakespeare's play, all just going through the motions?

Our best indicators would be from the books Richard was known to have owned. In yesterday's article, I commented on the Wycliffe New Testament that he seems to have had since his days as duke of Gloucester. He also had an Old Testament in paraphrase verse, a book of private revelations by Saint Mechtilde called the Book of Special Grace,  and of course, a book of hours. This was found among his belongings at Bosworth Field. Henry Tudor presented it to his mother, Margaret Beaufort, probably as a trophy.

The book of hours was, without question, the most important religious book for (well-to-do) laymen in the Middle Ages. More than the Bible or the Missal, the book of hours was the lay Christian's guide to daily prayer. At its core laid the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a simplified version of the full Divine Office prayed by clerks and monks. And England, more than any other kingdom in Christendom, was known for zealous observance of the divine Hours through the day even from lay folk. Like their modern counterpart, the hand missals, books of hours also included the seven penitential psalms, the litany of saints, and all the other essential prayers one might desire, even custom additions or specially composed prayers at the patron's request. Eamon Duffy has a wonderful volume on this subject called Marking the Hours, with special emphasis on all the little notes in the margins that medieval owners left for us to analyze (everything from typical prayers to store inventories, shopping lists, and gossip).

An Annunciation scene in Richard's book of hours.

Richard's book of hours was already an antique by the time he got it, but he made it his own with a prayer added at the end. I quote only one section of a longer text:

"Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, deign to free me, your servant Richard, from every tribulation, sorrow and trouble in which I am placed and from the plots of my enemies, and deign to send Michael the Archangel to my aid against them, and deign, Lord Jesus Christ, to bring to nothing their evil plans... even as you brought to nothing the counsel of Achitofel, who incited Absolom against King David."

Seward goes on to psychoanalyze Richard's prayer, as though it suggests a man living in the paranoia and guilt of past sins. The strongest evidence in favor is the prayer's heading: de beato Juliano. The prayer invokes the name of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, who (according to the Golden Legend) was forgiven by Christ even after murdering his own parents. Would this prayer, then, resound in a special way for a man who ordered the deaths of his own nephews in a bid for the crown? On the other hand, as a Ricardian would point out, there's nothing unusual at all in the language of Richard's prayer for a pious man of the age. It was a time when the faithful were preoccupied with the last petition in the Lord's Prayer, of deliverance from all temptation and evil spirits; a worldview which reached its full and truly ridiculous exaggeration in the person of a young monk named Martin Luther a few decades hence. The consequences of its backlash would spell the end of spiritual unity in the Christian west.

God outside of time

If this all seems like nothing more than a journey through the superstitions of a long-dead age, I apologize for sharing my ideas so poorly. No, I wrote only to explain a system of belief that's now effectively alien to the modern man, even the average modern Catholic. Strange to say, though, that it wasn't the Reformation that brought an end to the idea of chantries for the dead. The last chantry in England was endowed by Queen Mary during her brief restoration of Catholicism, but elsewhere, purgatorial societies; that is, fraternities of people enrolled together with a pledge to pray for the souls of the departed of a particular community, such as the local parish church; had a rebirth in the later 19th century and persisted in strength until (you guessed it) Vatican II. The idea of such a medievalism then became an embarrassment among the enlightened clergy, which just about every bishop and priest of the day liked to fashion themselves as... and so, the societies withered down to extinction in short order.

Thankfully, since God exists outside of time, the modern Catholic need not feel enslaved to the whim of theological trends, and can rest assured that prayers offered in the year 2015 can be just as powerful for someone who died in 1485 as though they offered up on the altar on the very day of death.

Cardinal Nichols isn't the only one to offer prayers on behalf of the forgotten king. The Dominican friars at Holy Cross will pray Vespers this evening. And, notably, on the day of reinterment, the church of Saint Catherine, Leyland will be celebrating a sung requiem Mass in the traditional Latin Rite, with music "in the style and manner" of Richard's day. My own efforts to organize a requiem Mass for Richard (and the princes in the Tower, and all who died at Bosworth Field) came to naught, but I'll be uniting my prayer intentions on that day with any Masses being offered for the same on the 26th. I hope that if anyone out there happens to attend a requiem for Richard that you will kindly share pictures with me to repost here.

I end this post with the text of Cardinal Nichols's homily during the Requiem Mass at Holy Cross Priory, first posted on the Catholic Herald. As with the homily at Compline, it's worth reading (and for frock flick viewers, look out for the thinly veiled reference to that Cromwellian agitprop piece known as Wolf Hall).

This evening we fulfil a profound and essential Christian duty: that of praying for the dead, for the repose of their eternal souls. Here we pray for King Richard III, ‘King of England and France and Lord of Ireland’ to use a title he ascribed to himself. This is a remarkable moment.

The prayer we offer for him this evening is the best prayer there is: the offering of the Holy Mass, the prayer of Jesus himself, made complete in the oblation of his body and blood on the altar of the cross, present here for us on this altar. This is the summit of all prayer, for it is made in and through the one person, the eternal Word, through whom all created beings have life. It is a prayer that arises from the very core of creation, the cry of the Word returning to the Father and carrying within it the totality of that creation, marred and broken in its history, yet still longing for the completion for which it has been created. It is, therefore, such an important Catholic tradition to seek the celebration of Mass for the repose of the souls of those who have died, especially for each of our loved ones whose passing we mourn. Let us not forget or neglect this great gift.

During this week, Mass is being offered in many Catholic Churches for the repose of the soul of King Richard III. Rightly so. That is exactly what he would have wished, having himself set up at least one chantry chapel for Masses to be celebrated for the dead of both sides of the Battle of Towton in 1461. This was a most violent conflict, marking the defeat of Henry IV, a single day on which between 10-20,000 Lancastrians were killed and a stark demonstration of the tragedy of civil war. Prayers were indeed needed.

Surely we can be confident that, despite the haste and the violent confusion of the time, this same Sacrifice of the Mass was celebrated by the Greyfriars for the repose of the soul of the defeated King at the time of his burial in their church here in Leicester in August 1485.

Indeed we know that Richard was a man of anxious devotion who kept and marked his own book of prayers and who must have attended Mass throughout his life. Remarkably we also know that this vestment that I wear this evening is recorded as belonging to the royal wardrobe of Richard III. We may reasonably speculate that Richard participated in the celebration of Mass at which this same vestment was being worn.

Richard was not a man of peace. The times in which he lived and the role into which he was born did not permit that. But now we pray for his eternal peace.

Richard was a man who sought to offer to his citizens justice through the rule of law. He brought in important changes to the administration of law, including the institution of the Court of Requests at which poor people could bring their grievances to law. He improved the conditions of bail, enabling people to defend their property in the period before trial and he ordered the translation into English of written laws and Statutes again to make them more widely available. His role and arbiter and judge appear strongly in contemporary records and he twice asserted, in one legal dispute, that ‘we intend, nor will none otherwise do at any time, but according to the King’s laws.’ His actions did not always match those words. But this evening we pray that the merciful judgement of our loving God is extended to him in every degree, for we know that it is only the gift of God’s mercy that protects us from the demands of God’s justice.

I am much relieved that this evening we are not required to come to any such judgement ourselves. Indeed the judgement of our fellow human being is only of passing consequence for we know how fickle that judgement can be. This we see most clearly as reflection continues on the dramatic years of the House of Tudor in both fiction and historical research: saints are recast as sinners and sinners can become saints. But that is not our business.

Ours is to beseech of our loving Father the embrace of his mercy for this our brother who lived and died so long ago but who through such strange circumstances is again at the centre of public attention and human judgment. We pray for him as a sinner, like every other person, even if his life was lived on a more spectacular scale and in a more public arena than most. Today then we seek not to assert the greatness of Kings but the greatness of God’s mercy towards them and towards us all.

Richard, we know was not the physically most handsome of men. We know he suffered a brutal death, suffering ten fierce blows to the head. We know that his body was subject to humiliation after death, paraded from the field of battle by being thrown naked over the back of a horse and there receiving further wounds from a hostile sword. But we also know that he had been baptised into the death of Christ and so received the promise that he would rise with Christ to new life.

The words of the Holy Gospel, then, invite our trust, not only for ourselves but for all who have departed this life with a trusting faith in God. We know that the Lord has gone to prepare a place, a home, for us. This promise of a heavenly home was made to Richard. In his day, a ruthless and violent age, especially in the upper reaches of society, a home certainly had to be a castle, strong, well-fortified and easily defended. Otherwise it provided no safety at all. But the home promised to us by the Lord is of a different nature. In it peace comes only through the victory of Jesus over the last of all enemies, death itself. Protection too is ensured by that victory which has dethroned the powers of evil once and for all, even though they are still to be found within the fashioning of every human endeavour. The entry to that heavenly home, its open gates and sweeping drive, the royal road of life, is none other than the person of Jesus, the Way, the Truth and the Life.

This evening we pray that this promise of the Lord is indeed fulfilled. We offer this holy Mass that even while his remains are lying in the Cathedral nearby, his soul is united with God in the glory of heaven there to await the final resurrection of all things in Christ.

This was the hope he held in his heart. This is the hope we hold for ourselves and our loved ones too. We share this one hope and the faith and love which accompany it. In this grace we pray for this dead King and we pray that the kingship in Christ, given to us all, may truly guide our lives and make us builders of that eternal Kingdom here in our world today.

 

 

Other entries during "Richard III Week":

-Today in history: Henry IV: the man whose claim to the crown started the troubles that led to the Wars of the Roses

-The first day: Richard on tour: select photos from the procession on Sunday, and the cardinal-archbishop of Westminster's Compline homily

-The Bible in Richard's day, and, was Richard a proto-Protestant?: on the king's reading habits and what to make of his Wycliffe New Testament

-A requiem for Richard: on the Requiem Mass, the king's faith, his book of hours, the cult of purgatory, and the chantry chapels of Richard's age

-Of hearses and hearse cloths: looking at Richard III's funeral pall and dressing the dead in medieval times

-Richard III's claim to the throne: sanguinity, statue, or sacrament?: Examining Richard's dynastic claims and what makes a king the king

-O God of Earth and Altar: a hymn by G.K. Chesterton, used at the reinterment on Thursday

-The poet laureate on Richard III: the poem at the reinterment. Also, Benedict Cumberbatch.

In defense of indulgences, the buying thereof, and pardoners – and a resolution to restore such disciplines formerly held in disrepute

by J.T.M.G.


[We are all entitled to a little cheekiness, no?]

After putting our daughter to bed, Madame and I had a convivial time with a longtime friend, now a seminarian of the diocese, at the local public house Saturday evening last. (For those of delicate dispositions who might be given to scandal at any suggestions of merriment within the forty days of Lent, I remind them that the liturgical Sunday begins after First Vespers of Saturday evening.) Thereupon we resolved many pressing questions on matters theological and ecclesiastical, and a series of decrees will surely be posted on the Holy See’s website with all due haste, pending the papal rubber-stamp.

For today’s blog, I only bring up one brief remembrance of the conversation, wherein Madame asked, “one of the conditions for gaining a plenary indulgence is to pray for the Pope’s intentions. But what if the Pope’s intentions are evil?” My seminarian friend assured her that this prescription applies only to those intentions that are good. And, I lately discovered that modern technology now allows us to know exactly what those intentions are. The Holy See publishes the Pope’s monthly intentions for the year. We may, therefore, know that the two intentions for this month of March are “that those involved in scientific research may serve the well-being of the whole human person” and “that the unique contribution of women to the life of the Church may be recognized always”; and that our consciences may rest assured that God will transfer our prayers to more fruitful ends if, in fact, He prefers scientists to exploit creation at our expense, or for the state of womanhood to perpetually remain a thankless mode of existence.

 

What are indulgences for, anyway?

Heaven and earth shall pass away,
but political cartoons shall never pass away.

In grade school, we’re taught that the big, bad medieval Church got it in their heads to sell forgiveness of sins for six shillings to pay for their banquets of chestnuts and other such worthy expenditures. As Dr. Luther infamously attributed to Friar Tetzel, “As soon as the gold in the casket rings / The rescued soul to heaven springs”. This becomes doubly confusing for those of us who grew up under the Protestant rhetoric (which our European cousins probably believe has passed into the ages of myth, though it persists quite alive and well in various parts of the States) who know that papists indulge in every sort of vice and debauchery, with the full intent to confess it in church in the morning and do it all over again the next weekend. It’s a wonder no one in grade school or Protestant Sunday school ever asks: “why do the Romish whores even bother to buy indulgences if confession is free?” (One can deduce that confession is free, or else the weekly regimen of sin-confess-repeat would grow to be a monstrously expensive habit.) After all, even the 1-percenters among us would willingly undergo a full audit from the IRS every year if it meant they would never actually have to pay any taxes at the end.

 

The answer to the indulgence question is simple: the Catholic catechism teaches us that sin incurs two consequences from God, eternal and temporal. The punishment for mortal sin without any repentance at one’s final hour is eternal damnation. The sacrament of penance (or reconciliation, or confession; or, as the Modern Medievalist likes to say, “shriving”) lifts the sentence of damnation, but there yet remains the temporal consequence, an impurity of the soul which is washed either by acts of penance while still living on earth, or after death in purgatory. Everyone who goes to purgatory is saved, for they will all eventually pass through the pearly gates, though it’s traditionally understood to be rather less pleasant than the direct route. Of course, the expressway to heaven is fraught with its own inconveniences, such as dying immediately after baptism or while still a child, having one’s head severed by an ISIS thug with a boxcutter, or worst of all, having to die of old age while hashing out a life of heroic sanctity every day for decades on end. For the rest of us, purgatory it is. From the Latin word purgare, meaning “to purify” or “to purge”, purgatory is the name that the medievals gave to that place, or perhaps state, where souls that are not yet ready to fully withstand and partake in the Beatific Vision undergo penance for sins that they failed to make full satisfaction for during life.



I don't suppose EA will consider making this a trilogy...

The “true Christian” here will be quick to pounce with their Scriptural prooftext of choice about Christ’s sacrifice being sufficient for all mankind. The skeptic says the whole business of Christian redemption, whether Protestant or Catholic, is absurd if mass murderers (Hitler is a favorite in these sorts of discussions, but substitute Mao or George W. Bush as your politics dictate) can go on doing their dirty deeds and then go to heaven merely by professing faith in the Savior on their deathbeds. But the Catholic (and the Eastern Orthodox, though they use different terms) knows that, even if the mass murderer in question makes a sincere confession at the last rites, a life so conditioned to sin won’t find eternity with God as a humble servant of the divine will quite as thrilling as the satisfaction of knowing he could order the deaths of a thousand hapless subjects at random before breakfast. No, even we less ambitious sinners are conditioned to imagine heaven as a place where we all wear white robes and play the harp with naked babies, singing the same words of praise over and over again for all time. Quaint. Boring. There’s a reason why we can make a video game about Dante’s Inferno, while Paradiso ignored by all but graduate-level literature students.

So Saint Catherine of Genoa said, as medieval Italian mystics are wont to do,

“As for paradise, God has placed no doors there. Whoever wishes to enter, does so. All-merciful God stands there with His arms open, waiting to receive us into His glory. I also see, however, that the divine presence is so pure and light-filled – much more than we can imagine – that the soul that has but the slightest imperfection would rather throw itself into a thousand hells than appear thus before the divine presence. Tongue cannot express nor heart understand the full meaning of purgatory, which the soul willingly accepts as a mercy the realization that that suffering is of no importance compared to the removal of the impediment of sin.” (Treatise on Purgatory)

No, heaven is no place for us complicated folk with all our baggage about what ought to make a satisfying afterlife. And so, the Church, even in ancient times, understood that there was an intermediary condition of purifying the soul. As Saint Paul wrote,

“Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble; Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for they shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man’s work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.” (I Corinthians 3:11:15)

 

Dante's Purgatorio

Where did indulgences come from? A brief sketch

Exactly what happens in purgatory has long been a province of speculation for theologians, but somewhere along the way, the Church developed the idea that “time in purgatory”, or the degree of purifying to be endured there, could be docked down by doing penance or other pious actions here on earth. The early Church was already quite accustomed to performing massive amounts of penance that would be extreme by modern standards. Imagine confessing to masturbation and then being barred from receiving Communion for seven years. Nonetheless, these penances were imposed after confession, and not as a condition before being absolved of sin. The ancient Roman penitent who died one year into his penance wasn’t going straight to hell in a handbasket, and yet, his suffering on earth after absolution wasn’t for naught, either. It was to reduce the temporal consequences of sin. After the age of persecution ended, church councils and individual confessors gradually commuted these hardcore penances and substituted other acts of piety in their place. Many of the fathers themselves, such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa and Saint Basil, led the way in easing the penances of former times. (Catholic Encyclopedia, entry on Indulgences)

At last, in the millennium-long tradition of churchmen issuing penances of greater or lesser severity, Pope Urban II took it one step further: in the year of our Lord 1095, before some two hundred bishops at the council of Clermont, Urban called for a military intervention to seize the Holy Land in what would later be known as the First Crusade. And to sweeten the pot? A plenary indulgence: full satisfaction of all the consequences of sin (following confession) for anyone who would take up arms and make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It’s a tragedy that history has given us five or more radically different versions of the pope’s speech, so we may never get an idea of just how Urban expressed this idea. The most famous version, chronicled by Fulcher of Chartres years after the fact, has him say:

“All who die by the way, whether by land or by sea, or in battle against the pagans, shall have immediate remission of sins. This I grant them through the power of God with which I am invested.” (Medieval Sourcebook)

Pope Urban II addresses the Council of Clermont

Balderic, archbishop of Dol, recounts Urban’s words as an instruction to the bishops assembled:

“You, brothers and fellow bishops; you, fellow priests and sharers with us in Christ, make this same announcement through the churches committed to you, and with your whole soul vigorously preach the journey to Jerusalem. When they have confessed the disgrace of their sins, do you, secure in Christ, grant them speedy pardon.” (Medieval Sourcebook)

And, according to the Liber Lamberti, one of the decrees of the Council of Clermont was:

“Whoever for devotion alone, not to obtain honour or money, shall set out to free the church of God at Jerusalem, that shall be counted to him for all penance (pro omni penitentia).” (Robert Somerville, The Councils of Urban II, Vol. 1)

In 1187, following the disastrous Battle of Hattin which would result in the loss of Jerusalem to Salah ad-Din, Pope Gregory VIII called the Third Crusade. His bull, Audita tremendi, renewed the promises of a plenary indulgence:

“We promise full remission of their sins and eternal life to those who take up the labor of this journey with a contrite heart and a humble spirit and depart in penitence of their sins and with true faith. Whether they survive or die, they should know that they, after they have made a true confession, will have the relaxation of the penance imposed, by the mercy of almighty God, by the authority of the apostles Peter and Paul, and ours.”

Some authors add that this promise was extended also to those souls who were unable to take up arms but made a significant financial contribution.

The 13^th century saw the rise of lesser indulgences issued by bishops for such events as the dedications of new churches, and just as quickly, church councils had to condemn their abuses. The fourth Lateran Council, held in 1215, declared that for abbots to grant indulgences at all was an abuse, as was the practice of bishops amping up their indulgences with extreme bonuses:

“Moreover, because the keys of the church are brought into contempt and satisfaction through penance loses its force through indiscriminate and excessive indulgences, which certain prelates of churches do not fear to grant, we therefore decree that when a basilica is dedicated, the indulgence shall not be for more than one year, whether it is dedicated by one bishop or by more than one, and for the anniversary of the dedication the remission of penances imposed is not to exceed forty days. We order that the letters of indulgence, which are granted for various reasons at different times, are to fix this number of days, since the Roman pontiff himself, who possesses the plenitude of power, is accustomed to observe this moderation in such things.” (Lateran IV, under 62. Regarding saints’ relics)

What’s this about years, you ask? Until the Vatican II reforms, indulgences that were not plenary (full) were typically parsed in terms of days, months, or years. By way of example, I name the indulgence of 100 days granted by Pope Saint Pius V (Quod a nobis, 9 July 1568) for those who would devoutly pray the Office of the Dead on specified days; at any other time, 40 days. This was admittedly a confusing situation since the language tends to suggest that gaining the indulgence would dock 40 or 100 days off of one’s sentence in purgatory. But no, what the Church means here is that the indulgence is equal to that of doing 40 or 100 days of old-school penance, as was formerly done in the early centuries of Christianity. And now, when we put it that way, spending a half-hour to pray the Office of the Dead suddenly sounds like a really good deal by comparison. For the curious, many more indulgences can be found in a book called the Raccolta (“collection”): an anthology of pious acts that have indulgences attached to them. After Vatican II, the old Raccolta was replaced by a new volume, with new rules, called the Enchiridion. More on that later.

The Jubilee of 1300

It’s vital to understand that, even from the beginning, indulgences were believed to flow directly from the Petrine office, for only the pope held the keys to unlock the heavenly treasury. Just as priests required jurisdiction from the local bishop to hear confessions, and bishops in turn required jurisdiction (even if implied) from the pope, so too did indulgences require papal authorization. And, it was the popes alone who issued the most potent of indulgences, the plenary: full remission of all temporal consequences of sin, without the need to specify days or years. Plenary indulgences were still rare in the High Middle Ages, being attached only to the loftiest of endeavors: the Crusades. The first non-crusader plenary indulgence was attached to the great Jubilee of 1300. In the spirit of the Old Testament’s law of Moses, which celebrated every 50^th year with forgiveness of debts and manumissions of slaves (Leviticus 25), Pope Boniface VIII’s bull Antiquorum fida relatio granted “great remissions and indulgences for sins” for pilgrims who would visit the city of Rome and, particularly, the basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Popes have inaugurated jubilee years every half-century, and often more frequently, ever since, the most recent being the great jubilee of 2000 under John Paul II.

From the 1300’s onward, the business of indulgences gets truly interesting because it becomes just that: a business. Sure, apologists will rightly point out that you can’t strictly “buy” an indulgence; that indulgences are attached to the giving of alms to a charitable cause or other worthy endeavor. This is really semantics because, like it or not, a large part of the later medieval Church’s works were driven by the revenues generated by indulgences. The fantastic Gothic cathedrals with their towers reaching to the heavens and shrines studded with precious stones of every color didn’t all pay for themselves, after all. The difference between Luther and me is that I find the idea rather useful.

In order to raise money for the construction of a new cathedral, a bishop might have commissioned a number of quaestores: purveyors of indulgence certificates. Likewise, hospitals made regular use of quaestores to pay the bills, for this was the age of universal healthcare. Quaestores became the backbone of an economy that paid for the building and upkeep of schools, poor-houses, and so many other vital institutions of the medieval world. Even the building of bridges and highways, or the ransoming of poor Christians from slavery in the Moorish lands, was paid for by the “sale” of indulgences. In English, they were known as pardoners, and no account of this office is more complete than that of the Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale among Chaucer’s merry band of pilgrims. Chaucer’s Pardoner is a wretched man, a charlatan who prowls the countryside, hocking off relics made of pig bones to ignorant peasants, preaching from church to church, and passing round the plate at the offertory for his forged indulgence certificates from Rome, where the Pardoner has likely never even been.

400         Of avarice and of swich cursednesse

                  Of avarice and of such cursedness

 401         Is al my prechyng, for to make hem free

                  Is all my preaching, to make them generous

 402         To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me.

                  To give their pennies, and namely unto me.

 403         For myn entente is nat but for to wynne,

                  For my intention is only to make a profit,

 404         And nothyng for correccioun of synne.

                  And not at all for correction of sin.

 405         I rekke nevere, whan that they been beryed,

                  I care not a bit, when they are buried,

 406         Though that hir soules goon a-blakeberyed!

                  Though their souls go picking blackberries! (Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Prologue of the Canterbury Tales)

In all likelihood, this sort of huckster was indeed a common sight, rather than a mere caricature from a disaffected anti-clericalist. For as many licensed pardoners, there were just as many who acted completely without any authority whatsoever but their own. And while the majority of truly licensed pardoners were drawn from the clergy or religious orders, many, such as probably Chaucer’s Pardoner, were also laymen. And yet, even the dignity of religious life was no guarantee of truthful advertising. Years before the Canterbury Tales were published, Pope Boniface IX condemned both friars and secular clerics who went about absolving sins without even asking for contrition, absolving unfulfilled penances, and reconciling heretics to the Church, all the while proclaiming a false writ from Rome. A century prior, a council in Mainz, in 1244, decreed:

“The 'quaestores' claim to be provided with letters of authorization by the Pope and other prelates, and since many of the clergy cannot distinguish between genuine and fabricated documents, the council insists that no almsgatherer be admitted into any parish until his papers have been examined and their validity certified to in writing by the Ordinary of the diocese. Any infringement of this statute by the clergy will be followed ipso facto by three years' suspension. Those, however, who undertake to make collections without written episcopal sanction, are to be arrested by the secular authorities and handed over to the episcopal tribunal.” (The Church and Abuse of Indulgences, as seen in The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. 46, p. 188)

 

And this is just one of countless examples of censures from the pardoners’ very inception up to the Reformation. Was it only greed that kept the medieval Church from shutting down the business of pardoning down entirely? Were they not, like our college fraternities today (with one story after another of lethal hazing, organized rape, drunk driving, and racist outbursts), a continual source of embarrassment and scandal? History’s most infamous quaestor of all would eventually herald the final death of the institution. Johann Tetzel of the Order of Preachers, actually a quite learned priest and preacher, as Dominican friars typically were, was assigned by Pope Leo X as commissioner of indulgences for all Germany in 1517. His particular goal was to raise money for the construction of the new Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome, though half of the proceeds were claimed by the archbishop of Mainz to repay debts owed for his purchase of the office. Tetzel was rather aggressive in his marketing, and though it’s unlikely he ever actually said that rhyme which began “as soon as the coin in the coffer rings”, he nonetheless spread the error that an indulgence could be applied toward the souls of dead relatives without any contrition; an error rightly condemned both by Luther and Rome’s greatest theologian of the day, Cardinal Cajetan. But this only scratches the surface of the underlying issues that sparked the Reformation.

An authentic indulgence signed by Friar Tetzel himself

 

Here lie two of history’s greatest ironies. The first: Duke Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, whose protection alone saved Luther from capture and execution, was affronted by Tetzel in no small part because the friar was a competing interest. Frederick wasn’t a Protestant himself. Quite the contrary, he had amassed possibly the largest personal collection of purported relics in Christendom. They numbered 17,443 in 1518, and actually grew another two thousand while the Reformation pressed on. Tetzel never purveyed relics or indulgences in Wittenberg because he was forbidden by the Duke. Citizens of Wittenberg, though, did leave town to buy from Tetzel in neighboring cities and villages, and we can vividly imagine what Frederick would have thought of that. The second irony, by the way, is that these relics were housed in the “castle church” of Wittenberg, where the Duke had placed Luther as a preacher. The money Frederick made from the relics and indulgences is how Luther made his living as a young priest, and is even what paid for Luther’s doctoral studies.

A proposal for rebirth!

The Catholic Church, at the Council of Trent, finally abolished the office and function of quaestor itself, not merely the abuse thereof. A few years later, Pope Saint Pius V went further and forbade all financial transactions involving indulgences whatsoever. The practice of seeking and gaining indulgences continued on for a few centuries in a “purer” way, though with diminishing fervor. After Vatican II, the practice of indulgences, and purgatory itself, has suddenly been shelved as an embarrassing medievalism by virtually all churchmen on the face of the earth. Strangely, this is despite the chief mover of the Council reforms, Pope Paul VI, issuing a quite detailed explanation and defense of indulgences in Indulgentiarum Doctrina in 1967, which even “condemns with anathema those who maintain the uselessness of indulgences or deny the power of the Church to grant them” (really strong language for a man like Paul VI). Even Pope Francis has publically spoken about purgatory at least once.

In tandem with near universal ignorance of the purgatory doctrine is an ever-growing deficit in the Church’s revenues. The consequences have been severe: Catholic hospitals and universities are now for-profit institutions, barely connected to their religious origins and even less distinguishable from their secular counterparts in medicine and academia. What a contrast from the free healthcare given by the Poor Knights of the Hospital of Saint John, or the free tuition for students of the old universities (including, of course, Luther’s Wittenberg)… all supported in no small part by the sale of indulgences. One of the towers of Rouen Cathedral was called the tour de buerre, the “butter tower”, because its construction was funded by indulgences with permissions to eat butter during Lent, which in those days, as the eastern rites still maintain, was forbidden. But as I see it, at least the tower was raised at all. Its like hasn’t been raised in this country for a hundred years.

As I sat with Madame and my seminarian friend last Saturday, I observed that the media casts our current pope as the “pope of mercy”, as though he had invented the idea. But it would be better to say that the first pope of mercy, if such a one exists, was Urban II back at the Council of Clermont, calling that first crusade and promising full satisfaction of penance to all who took up the cross. Every vicar of Christ that ever issued a new indulgence can be described as a pope of mercy. For if purgatory is real, then indulgences, which all flow from the chair of Peter, are ultimately a gift from heaven. It’s tragic that nearly all Catholics are totally unaware of these teachings. Therefore, in the spirit of this blog, applying old-world solutions to new-world problems, I have some ideas to pass down to His Holiness, or anyone else in the Vatican who might be listening…..

 

Whereas, the Catholic Church has, even in our own time, reaffirmed as “a divinely revealed truth that sins bring punishments inflicted by God's sanctity and justice” (Paul VI, Indulgentiarum Doctrina) which is expiated either here on earth through penance or after death through purgatory;

 

Whereas, “the Church also in our days then invites all its sons to ponder and meditate well on how the use of indulgences benefits their lives and indeed all Christian society” (ibid.);

 

Whereas, despite the efforts of the postconciliar reform, the pursuit and even the knowledge of indulgences and the teaching of purgation after death have all fallen to dramatic lows;

 

Whereas, the Church in Rome is currently undertaking plans to jointly commemorate, with the Lutheran Church, the 500^th anniversary of the Ninety-five Theses of Martin Luther, submitted to the archbishop of Mainz on October 31, 1517, which, in part, object to certain practices surrounding indulgences, some which were subsequently upheld as perfectly orthodox and praiseworthy by Pope Leo X and his successors to the present day;

Be it resolved that the bishop of Rome, the Pope himself, lead all other bishops of the world in example by proclaiming a Jubilee year for 2017, beginning on the 31^st of October, to coincide with the birthday of the Protestant Reformation, with a plenary indulgence promising full remission of sins for various devotions and works of piety to be determined by said authorities, such as but not limited to celebrations of difference between our separated brethren:

·         the devout reading of Scripture (especially the seven deuterocanonical books and the epistle of James, whose canonicity Luther doubted);

·         the devout reading of King Henry VIII’s “Defense of the Seven Sacraments” (the same apologetic work against errors of Luther which earned him the title of Fidei defensor by Pope Leo X);

·         and the devout hearing of the sacrifice of the Mass (especially Masses celebrated in Latin, which Luther was quick to jettison).

Be it also resolved that, in order to more effectively spread the message of mercy, especially in those developed and secularized nations of the world which are ignorant or cold to the need for purgation, the disciplinary restrictions laid down by the Council of Trent be relaxed so that bishops may once again commission quaestores (or “purveyors”, or “pardoners”), duly licensed and formed to a right and proper conscience, to travel to the four corners of the earth, armed with the relics of the saints, to bring certificates of remission from the temporal consequences of sin to all believers who might desire them;

Be it also resolved that the apostolate of quaestor, in the spirit of the new evangelization, be open to any and all of the lay faithful, male or female, who might be called to spread the mercy of God in the form of indulgences, as they were in earlier, purer centuries of the Church;

Be it also resolved that the prohibition of Pius V, with respect to financial transactions and indulgences, be lifted so that holy mother Church may more fully enjoy the fruits of the new evangelization and be able to sustain herself in anticipation of future parish closings and expenses to be incurred by the possible relaxation of priestly celibacy.